Behind the Shot: Lost in Space

In this article I'll take you to the Snæfellsnes peninsula in western Iceland, to talk about an image I'm very happy about. It wasn't easy getting the shot to look as it does now, but I think the outcome justifies all the hard work, and I hope you'll agree.

'Lost in Space', Grundarfjörður, February 2013.

This picture was taken on my second visit to Kirkjufell ('Church Mountain' in Icelandic, also called 'Pyramid Mountain' for obvious reasons. The mountain is conveniently situated right outside the town of Grundarfjörður, in the north central part of Snæfellsnes). I was there back in December 2011 when I experienced some harsh weather, so I came back with a vengeance to get some better shots and to scout additional locations for my 'Winter Paradise' photo workshop next January.

This visit was by far more fruitful. We had several consecutive cloudless nights, and two Aurora shows in just four days! On one of the beautiful clear nights I went to shoot the mountain reflecting in the lake beside it. It was a moonless night, and the all-but-nonexistent light pollution made it possible to see an uncountable number of stars, and of course, the milky way, which was beautifully positioned right above the mountain. To add to this, the mountain was lit to exactly the right amount by the faint road lights, and a hint of Aurora was also visible. Talk about a perfect starting point!

Setup

It doesn't look like it, but this image is a vertical panorama composed of four separate exposures taken in landscape format. I used my Canon EOS 5D mark III and a Samyang 24mm f/1.4 - a lens that I really like for night photography, as it's sharp even when wide open and lets in an incredible amount of light while still being wide enough for classical landscape photography. The finished panorama turned out to be over 40 megapixels, which is great for large-scale printing.

All four shots were 15 second exposures, at f/1.4, ISO 3200. This long exposure, high ISO setting is what does the magic when it comes to night photography, as can be seen by the amazing number of stars visible in the image.

Composition

The composition is quite straightforward here. The mountain and reflection are on the bottom third of the image, and the Milky way seems to pop out of the top of the mountain, intersected by the streak of Auroral light.

What I do want to mention is the special feel brought about thanks to the fact that there is no 'real' foreground, only a faint one made of star-reflections in the lake. I love shooting this way (I call this 'unforeground'), since it really emphasizes the spacey, floating properties of the different elements in the shot. It truly seems like the mountain is lost in space!

Post-Processing

As mentioned, this is a vertical panorama. Let's look at the four images that make it up.

I opened the RAW files in Adobe Camera Raw, and performed some tweaks to the color temperature, contrast and clarity. I also tried to compensate for the heavy vignetting caused by the ultra-wide aperture setting.

Next I saved the files as TIFFs, and went on to continue post-processing in Photoshop. First, I used PTLens, a nice Photoshop add-on, to correct the lens distortion in order to make the stitching easier. PTLens does not yet support the Samyang 24/1.4 lens, so I tried a few options until using the correction for the Samyang 35/1.4 - close enough, but additional correction will be performed and explained below. I applied the same correction for all four images.

Next, I went on to stitch the panorama. This proved much more difficult than I imagined. In the image below you can see what I got when trying Photoshop's automerge option with the shots. Oy vey!

Photoshop couldn't even align the four shots together, not to mention the terrible distortion it produced. I therefore had to revert to manual stitching. I won't tire you with all the details of the stitching, as it was pretty hard and complex to achieve a natural-looking blend between all the shots. The easiest part to blend was the two lowermost shots.

I layered the two images, turned down the opacity on the upper layer and moved it until it overlapped the bottom layer perfectly. I then deleted the part containing the mountain's reflection, and flattened the result. To continue the process, I added and gently blended the other two shots, until what I had looked like this:

Ok, now I had the complete panorama. But the lens' distortion caused a slightly unrealistic look of the mountain. It looks a little 'flat' compared to reality, so I needed to correct that. I used Photoshop's free transform (Edit->Free Transform) option, and 'squished' the image a tiny bit until the mountain looked more like it actually does.

Another corrective step I did was to widen the reflections of the stars a bit, since they too got unrealistically 'squished'. I did that with the content-aware scale option (Edit->Content-Aware Scale), since it allowed me to stretch the star-reflection area without stretching the mountain's reflection, which would look unrealistic.

To apply content-aware scaling, first build a mask of the area you wish to scale.

Then, stretch it until satisfactory. Note how the star-relection area widened, but the mountain's reflection remained almost the same!

Ok, now the different elements in the image look exactly how they need to look. Next came some local adjustments. I wanted to work on the sky area - so I selected it using the quick selection tool, and then used the refine edge (Select->Refine Edge) tool to make sure the selection was accurate.

I started by applying some level adjustment on the selected sky area. As always, I used an adjustment layer.

Next I needed to improve the contrast in the sky. The sensor has its limits and the sky I saw was much more defined than this! The contrast boost was achieved by using a curve adjustment limited to the mid-section of the histogram. I.e., I lightened the lights and darkened the darks, but only in pixels lying in the mid-range in terms of brightness. This way I could boost the contrast significantly without losing detail in the brighter or darker parts of the image.

I've already explained some of the restrictive selection methods I use in my article 'Behind the Shot: Nautilus'. Please refer to it for an introduction. What's different here is that I chose the mid-range by saving a selection of the bright pixels as a channel, saving another selection of the dark pixels (achieved by performing the same procedure on the inverted image) as a channel, and finally subtracting (ctrl-alt-click on the channel mask) both selections from the full selection (what you get with 'select all' or ctrl-A), to obtain a selection restricted to the mid-range. I then applied quite a strong curves adjustment to boost the contrast in the sky area. After this adjustment, I further boosted the contrast in the sky by using a levels adjustment layer, and 'painting' it in. I'll show the process in the images below.

Mid-range selection, shown as a layer mask. Since the selection is 'weak', I boosted the curves quite a bit to achieve the desired increase in contrast.

A levels adjustment layer. I intentionally increased the levels far beyond the desirable amount, but then I inverted the layer mask and started slowly, painting the contrast in with a low-opacity brush tool.

The final mask of the levels adjustment layer. I boosted the contrast only where I wanted it - around the milky way.

After some additional tweaking, the contrast looks good. But adding this much contrast results in an exaggerated increase in saturation, which had to be corrected.

I ctrl-clicked the levels adjustment layer mask to load it as a selection, and created a new hue/saturation adjustment layer with similar mask. By reducing the saturation where the image seemed over-saturated I could restore a natural look.

The next thing needing treatment is the mountain. It has quite a few problems, namely the terrible yellow color cast caused by the street lights in the adjacent road, and a lack of contrast. Let's see what I did here.

First of all, a color-balance adjustment layer to make the mountain less yellow, and more similar to its real color.

Secondly, some contrast correction with a levels adjustment layer.

Finally, there were still some annoying yellow patches in the base of the mountain. I selected and desaturated them. Looks much better!

This was a tough image to create and process, but after all the hard work I think it looks good. To get it ready for Internet use, I converted the color profile to sRGB, reduced the size and performed some sharpening, and I was done!

Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer and photography guide based in Israel. Every January, Erez guides his Iceland winter photography workshops: 'Land of Ice' in the south and 'Winter Paradise' in the north and west. If you'd like to experience and shoot some of the most fascinating landscapes on earth with Erez as your photography guide, you're welcome to see the workshop webpages for details and participation, and view Erez' Iceland gallery. You can watch a teaser video here.

Comments

The photo appears to be taken from the vicinity of the village of Grundarfjörður looking north-west towards Kirkjufell (which I have climbed, it's a great adventure!). Where you would expect to see the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper (along with Polaris to mark North) the photo has a bright mass of stars running vertically through it which appears to be the Milky Way (not a prominent feature of the Icelandic night sky I'm afraid!).

For this to happen the Earth's axis would have to slant by a number QUITE a bit larger than the current 23.5° (my crude maths tell me that the ecliptic cannot rise higher than (90°-64° = 26°) + 23.5% = 49.5% and should of course be seen to the south, not the north (and presumably running west-east, not north-south).

Thank you for your image and for taking the time to write and post the accompanying explanation. It shows a generosity of spirit that is much appreciated. Thank you also to other posters sharing their knowledge.

I don't get it! None of the negative posters "saw" the shot conceptually to begin with, much less going out in a challenging environment actually mastering equipment which tends to function less, break down faster and be difficult to set up or control. (think gloves, polar suits, limited range of movement etc.).

Yet lots of people seem to "know it all" when it comes to differentiating between "art" and "photography" (if there were ever a need to do that) and those same people know instinctively what was wrong with the processing steps, the software used or the tweaks performed.

Yet here we have a stunning image with a complete narrative of how it was created, provided free and open for all to learn from. Maybe nobody will go out to that particular mountain in that particular country to shoot those particular panorama shots - yet we all get to pick what we want to learn from this.

For some, the answer seems to be "we do not wish to learn anything", sad.

Hopefully we won't see the level of inane and hateful comments we did with Ezra's waterfall topic.

Simply wonderful image and it's a shame I didn't see the stars once when I was in Iceland, as I had ideas for night sky over a wonderful glacial lagoon full of bergs. Well you show me what could have been (not as good of course).

this is an absolutely beautiful image but I'm really quite torn on it. The level of manipulation here is so extensive I'd put this into clear digital art territory; and indeed I had originally thought this was almost entirely a digital painting.

Don't take that to mean I can't appreciate the artistry and skill placed in the piece - it's clearly excellent art piece - it's just I have a hard time categorizing it.

I agree with Erez. Manipulating tone and colour and contrast is what we call 'optimisation' - i.e. making the best of what's IN the picture. Since cameras are flawed half-arsed man-made devices anyway, it's kind of weak to take what comes out of the camera as "truth", and anything but raw material to be worked up into something pleasing or useful. Thanks Erez - beautiful image as always!

It is a great picture. It is an example of how post processing can circumvent gear limitation.To you who think the reflections of some stars on the lake look brighter than their counterparts in the sky, and conclude it is not natural, you did not look carefully. The reflections are blue, never white, when many stars in the sky are white. So the reflections are not brighter, but bigger only. This is what happens when a light spot is reflected by a convex mirror (the top of a wave), plus the 15-sec exposure that combines each moving reflection into a larger spot. It is only your brain that concludes bigger equals brighter... Moreover, the kind of unpolished, matt surface of the lake acts as a strong AA filter, reflecting the bigger and brighter stars, filtering out the small and dim ones : just look at the small details of the mountain that are no longer there in the reflection.

Karroly, thanks for taking the time to explain what I did not in an earlier post. I felt it would be in vain. I have taken similar photos with the same result (stars on the water). You went the mile further in your explanation.. now if the GearHeads can comprehend (or want to believe) what you have written is another thing.

Another great tutorial Erez. Thank you for taking the time to explain your art. Have seen similar views in Tromso and wish I had your skill and talent to capture them and then display them the way I remember them. Photographs like this remind me what a beautiful world it can be.

In fact, I really hate people "making" scenery photos. While slightly adjusting the exposure seems just fine. Creating a master piece by distorting the image, adding something that wasn't there is totally unforgivable... Ask yourself why you are not at the right place at the right time.

Forgive me, but in Iceland, she has a very very favorable environment for shooting the stars.

A clear milky way cannot be capture when the lower photo was taken, and you won't get the reflection (if you insist that is not from the stars, what are they?) when you try to shot a clear milky. if merging does not equivalent to "adding", I am speechless.

It's stars reflected in rippling water. I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about that. If you think there should be a perfect reflection of the milky way in the water, then you're not grasping the effect rippling water has on reflections.

"All four shots were 15 second exposures, at f/1.4, ISO 3200. This long exposure, high ISO setting is what does the magic when it comes to night photography, as can be seen by the amazing number of stars visible in the image."

I am not a Pro. Maybe someone can explain to me why the above combination is better than, say, 60s exposure, at ISO 800? Or 4 minutes at ISO 200?

I was thinking that too. I would at least do 30-second exposures but then again 5dIII can handle high ISO with ease. I would definitely avoid the 4-minute exposure though as you would then start seeing star trails which wouldn't look good here.

Because 60s is WAY to long. Even 30s too. 15-20 is about all you can go before the stars start to elongate noticeably due to the earths rotation. The only way around this is a star tracking tripod head, which is what most people into Astrophotography use.

I think most people trying to take a good photo of the milky way uses the 500 rules (some people use 600). which is 500 / your focal length is the longest exposure you can have to avoid startrails. So in this case. 500/24mm would be 20 seconds. I also think that the less star trails the easier it is for stitching

Stars are so dim. Very little light reaches the camera, So in theory you should use the longest exposure as possible, but there are problems and limitation with long exposure. First, since the sky is moving (or I should say, our Earth is rotating), so if you have long exposure, the stars will move, depends on your focal length, 10, 15,is the max. 30sec if you are using a ultra-wide lens, then the stars will stretch out into curved streaks or star trails. Secondly, your sensor will also pick up stray radio signals, cosmic rays and thermal vibrations from the atmosphere. All of those will degrade your image. So having multiple images instead of one long exposure will fix all those problems. This is a very normal way to do astrophotography call stacking.

Maybe the photographer doesn't know that you can rotate the camera and take a portrait shot! Just saying!

Actually I don't understand why photographers go to so much trouble with multiple shots unless they plan to print extra large. Also the reflection in the water seems to not actually reflect the night sky.

How would this shot work as a single portrait shot? The edges of the mountain would not be in frame if it were shot in portrait and not landscape.

The final effect, with 4 landscape shots stacked and aligned, is much like shooting a 12mm lens in a portrait orientation. Maybe the photographer didn't have a 12mm lens? Maybe he needed the wide aperture his 24mm to keep the exposures short enough so that star trails didn't blur?

Well, it's a composite image, not really a photograph, but.. well.... most of the astrophotography is done with composites these days. You rarely can make a single exposure astrophotograph. Even for a sole reason of noise levels.

This isn't so much directed at the PP in this particular image, but rather this particular attitude towards PP techniques such as HDR, stitching, etc. in general. I've been photographing various subjects for over 25 years professionally, and have seen this perception grow as photography has moved from the film to digital medium. Ppl want to consider themselves "purists", ie, if it didn't come out of the camera in a single shot looking that way, it isn't "real', it's cheating, or at best, it's "art", without always thinking it through. Can images be overcooked in PS, sure. Cross the line from photos to graphic art, sure, but it's not like great images haven't been manipulated since the beginnings. Really, what's the difference in HDR or exposure manipulation in PS vs the water bath development techniques Adams and Weston used? Techniques like HDR and stitching, when used well, can serve to make an image capture a scene MORE like the eye, not as limited in DR or field of view, sees it.

I really like this article - can't understand all the hate. Would be much easier to create such an image with a tilt shift lens (using the shift then stitching undistorted panoramas). In fact it's inspired me to try

The biggest issue would have been aperture. The Canon TSE 24 is a 3.5 lens. That's 2 1/2 stops slower. He would have needed to shoot at 15000 ISO and image would have been ruined by noise, or stretch the exposure to over a minute and trailed the stars. Star trails can be cool in really long exposures, but 1 minute stars just look wrong.

Impressive result but why suffer for your art? The stitching could have been done in about 2 minutes in PTGUI (or similar) and the local adjustments would have been far easier in NX2. Photo$hop has its good points (e.g. lettering, free transformation and canvas sizing) but the type of work required for this example isn't exactly its forte.

Thedrman: NX2 has a selection brush that allows you to accurately select a region (or multiple regions) of an image by brushing over them with a suitably sized brush. It's then possible to apply any adjustment, effect or filter to the selection(s). NX2 automatically blends the result into the surrounding w.r.t. the brush size. The section brush can also be used in -ve mode to correct or remove any adjustment that has been overdone, saving the need to re-do the whole edit. Having completed an edit, you then click 'Next Step' to create a new layer. Layers can be turned on or off as in Photoshop.

This is an incredibly precise and powerful tool. Dodge/burn, flare removal and the sort of adjustments demonstrated in this article are very easy to perform.

A selection brush wouldn't make nearly as precise a selection as the luminosity selections done in this article. I have a feeling the people who think NX2 could do the job aren't fully grasping what is being done here in Photoshop.

I absolutely lack the talent to create this. Don't have the time, either. And if I did have the time, I'd prefer not spending it on digital manipulation. Nice photo, though. Sort of daytime and nighttime in the same picture.

I can't help but think that if this image was entered into a challenge it would get ripped apart for technical flaws. I like the concept and I can appreciate the effort it took to produce it. However, the blurred stars in the water were just too distracting.

I think it would be an excellent image if you just crop the water out all together.

I disagree, I tried, and it looks weird. The picture looks unballanced without the water. Also I like the "reverse" effect, usually when we take a picture of a landscape, we get sharp and detail below, on land, and a fuzzy sky, on this picture it is the other way around, and it is this reverse effect that make the picture special.

"this image was entered into a challenge it would get ripped apart for technical flaws" ... this is the reason why artists should not submit their works to the opinion of technocrats whose only focus is to evaluate the "technical" aspects of what should be considered art.

@Semper... If an artist were to try to represent this image, you can bet that the reflection would be there. Capturing a single image and pounding it with curves failed to render properly the reflection, which was probably of lower intensity in the water than the original in the sky. You can take the elitist view that art transcends craftsmanship, but in this case it failed on both counts. They are symbiotic concerns, one cannot properly exist without the other.

I can''t really see your point. The star reflections are blurred because of water movement. It wasn't really possible to take the shot using a shorter exposure, was it?@Kim - the shot wasn't 'pounded with curves'. The adjustment was only performed on a very weak mid-level selection, in a way that didn't cause loss of detail. Why not look at the provided raw files and see for yourself?

Kim,Nobody can predict the mind of an artist, this is what gave us Van Gogh, Manet, Kandinski or Dali... your assumption that the reflection of Kirkjufell should be in the water is closer to a documenting view of the image than at an artistic one. You are entitled to look at my response as "elitist", but I think too many times photographers allow themselves to be cast into documenting an event or a subject.

Lovely image from the mountain upwards ... the water is incongruently devoid of the Milky-Way and filled with blurred and too bright individual stars. Although it was shot legitimately, this is a case where subduing the stars in the water part of the image and perhaps overlaying at least a hint of a reflection of the Milky Way would -- in my opinion at least -- dramatically enhance an already very nice image.

Worrying about the colours is silly ... the image could be represented warmer or cooler with trivial amounts of effort. Regarding the use of Photoshop ... there are many excellent composite images in astrophotography owing to the use of tracking to get nice clean images of stars. This photograph did not use such technology but instead pounded the image with curves. What that did was to fail to capture what was surely there in real life ... the reflection of the Milky Way. Thus, in fact, the real image is actually the fake and a properly composited image would reflect reality much better. I hope you were able to follow that :-)

Fair enough ... but the eye expects there to have been a reflection, and not the one that is there with distorted and too bright stars that cannot easily be seen in the sky ... so I maintain that adding a subtle reflection from the sky and dropping the intensity of the real reflection improves the image. It simply feels wrong the way it is because it *looks* like it is meant to be a classic reflection shot without actually delivering.

Edit: I just took another look and there is not much movement at all ... the mountain is hardly distorted at all. So if the Milky Way were that bright in the sky, there would absolutely be a reflection (somewhat smeared) in the water. The lack of any hint of that is what makes the image look completely wrong.

Not sure what you guys are talking about, I can trace pretty much every single star reflection in the water to it's origin star in the sky without too much effort. They are almost at the same height from the horizon, much fainter though.

But I do agree it's a bit odd looking because they are big and fuzzy compared to their origin star and the brain doesn't agree.

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